1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a showcase.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-167927 discloses a showcase that is installed on a counter of a store such as a convenience store and accommodates articles so as to be visually recognizable from the outside.
Such a showcase includes a case main body. The case main body is formed in a box shape and has its interior sectioned into a storage room and a machine room. In the case main body, a front face constituting the storage room constitutes a customer serving face, and an opening is formed in a rear face constituting the storage room.
Article mounting shelves are arranged in a plurality of stages in the up-and-down direction in the storage room of the case main body. The article mounting shelves are configured to carry articles to be stored. The opening formed in the rear face of the case main body is opened and closed through right and left sliding movement of a plurality of glass doors.
In such a showcase, the front face (the customer serving face) or the like constituting the storage room in the case main body is formed of a transparent resin material or the like, thereby causing the articles carried on the article mounting shelves to be visually recognized through the customer serving face.
However, the showcase disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-167927 is a showcase exclusively for warming that has heaters arranged on the lower faces or the like of the respective article mounting shelves and heats the articles carried on the article mounting shelves. In this showcase, cooling of articles to be stored is not taken into consideration.
Given this situation, it is considered in the showcase disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-167927 that when the articles carried on the article mounting shelves are cooled, a cooler is arranged inside the case main body to cool the air inside the storage room by the cooler.
However, the storage room can be visually recognized from the outside, and the cooler is preferably arranged in the machine room in terms of good appearance and the like. When the cooler is thus arranged in the machine room, a heat insulating bottom plate that defines the storage room and the machine room needs to have an evacuating hole therein for evacuating the air inside the storage room into the machine room and a blowing hole for blowing out air cooled by the cooler from the machine room to the storage room.
The showcase is installed on a counter of a store as described above, and there are constraints on a height dimension, a width dimension, a depth dimension, and the like. Given this situation, the size of the machine room needs to be a required minimum in order to ensure the number of articles to be stored to a certain extent. In addition, the storage room has the article mounting shelves arranged in a plurality of stages to carry the articles, and when the evacuating hole is formed in accordance with the position of the cooler arranged in the machine room, an opening of the evacuating hole on the storage room side may overlap with the lowermost article mounting shelf and be blocked.
In other words, in the showcase, an area that can form an air inlet on a face facing the storage room and an area that can form the air inlet on a face facing the machine room may fail to overlap with each other in the up-and-down direction in the heat insulating bottom plate.
For that reason, an evacuating hole is inevitably formed in the heat insulating bottom plate in accordance with an arrangement state of the article mounting shelves in the storage room, and a flow channel or the like for feeding the air having passed through the evacuating hole to the cooler is inevitably arranged in the machine room. This situation brings about downsizing of the storage room caused by upsizing of the machine room and reduces the number of articles to be stored.